American biochemist Earl Sutherland Jr was inspired to pursue medical research when he read a book about Louis Pasteur. In World War II he served as a battalion surgeon under George S. Patton, and after the war he spent his career studying how hormones regulate body functions. He studied epinephrine with Nobel laureates Carl and Gerty Cori, and showed how adrenaline regulates the way sugar is broken down, providing a surge of energy when the body is under stress. In his most famous work, he discovered cyclic adenosine 3'5'-monophosphate (cyclic AMP), a "second messenger" which regulates numerous intracellular reactions. Sutherland received the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology in 1971, for "his long study of hormones, the chemical substances that regulate virtually every body function."